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99.1 silent

A

AnyHuman

Guest
I'm not sure if anyone cares or knows the operator of KHJS-LP, but it is on and silent and has been all weekend, and the stream on the website's not working either.
http://genx991fm.com/
 
KHJS-LP is now playing a live mic, in the rain. Might be from SA, or some other location, not sure. I can hear thunder (along with what might be a ticking clock or a leaky roof) on 99.1, and the stream's doing the same thing.
My recorded clip: https://www.sendspace.com/file/dx30mv

This is the stream URL for anyone wanting to check KHJS's feed. This is the same URL from the site: http://192.99.233.46:9538/

I'm not sure if this is intentional, probably not. But it's just funny haha.
 
I can hear people talking as of right now on 99.1, I don't think they know their mic is on and they're on the air... I feel bad for them, obviously a terrible accident.
 
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Music's back, but at very low volume. There's a noise gate active and the music's barely under the threshold so as to make the audio choppy, huge parts of songs are missing and the streaming bitrate's too low. It sounds as (insult removed) if not they just have a crappy engineer. At least I let them know the mic was on so can't be blamed there, but I really should stop writing to them. Maybe they'll fix their equipment soon.
 
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The volume's still quiet with the extremely low bitrate, so it sounds like the music's underwater or something. They probably were deported back to Mexico, and are running the station from Mexico I bet hence the low quality.
 
AnyHuman said:
The volume's still quiet with the extremely low bitrate, so it sounds like the music's underwater or something. They probably were deported back to Mexico, and are running the station from Mexico I bet hence the low quality.
Click to expand...


Where on gods green earth do you come up with these insane ideas? You make some wild accusations and throw around some wild theories/ideas with absolutely zero proof of anything.
 
AnyHuman said:
The volume's still quiet with the extremely low bitrate, so it sounds like the music's underwater or something. They probably were deported back to Mexico, and are running the station from Mexico I bet hence the low quality.
Click to expand...

FYI: Many if not most of the stations in Mexico are as well engineered as ones in the US.

Unlike the USA, nearly all radio stations in Mexico are profitable. And also unlike the US, stations are much more prone to having a dedicated engineering staff rather than contract engineers, and stations have live talent all day even in the smallest markets (due mostly to labor regulations and union rules).

They also have a good internet infrastructure, at least in the medium to larger cities. And, sensibly, they did a migration of about 85% of their AMs to FM, repurposing AM for community and indigenous language stations.

Of course, that ignores the elephant in the post, which is the assumption that the station operators are not US Citizens as required by law (with a few, very few, exceptions having been granted). They can't be deported. Or is your statement the assumption that Spanish speakers are all here illegally; I am Spanish dominant so maybe I should be deported, too.
 
There's nothing wrong with a legal U.S. citizen. I'm not saying the people running KHJS-LP aren't legal U.S. citizens, but what 99.1 is putting out right now makes me think they're probably in Mexico as the Internet quality of the feed they're using is bad. Maybe they're in the United States though they just don't have good Internet.
 
AnyHuman said:
There's nothing wrong with a legal U.S. citizen. I'm not saying the people running KHJS-LP aren't legal U.S. citizens, but what 99.1 is putting out right now makes me think they're probably in Mexico as the Internet quality of the feed they're using is bad. Maybe they're in the United States though they just don't have good Internet.
Click to expand...

A little fact for you: unless there is a specific waiver, foreign ownership (meaning non-citizens, even if legal residents) is limited in the USA.

Another fact: In Latin America in a variety of nations skipped the technology steps in between and jumped from somewhat primitive and hard to obtain landline phones to very sophisticated cellular and digital networks. In some places, the infrastructure is more modern than in the US because older equipment does not have to be amortized before new investments are made.

Third fact: "there's nothing wrong" with a legal resident of the US working in radio, even if not a citizen. There is nothing wrong with a foreign national here on an H1-B visa, either. Remember, for the first 150 years of our nationhood, all you had to do to become "one of us" was arrive at a port of entry, fill out a form, pass a perfunctory medical exam and make a decision on what city or state to go to.

Fourth fact: There are a number of legal licensees in the US who are dual nationals... citizens of the US as well as of some other country. This is legal.
 
David, as a site moderator, perhaps it should be considered to remove or suspend Any Human from these boards. I am a silent observer of these boards and enjoy them greatly. Over the last couple of years, I have noticed a tremendously high number of posts from Any Human in which he makes comments that range from senseless at best and gibberish at worst. Most of the time he replies to his own comments (i.e. talks to himself) on these boards. He doesn't bring any real broadcast knowledge to these boards, rather, he floods them with his senseless musings. Just something for your consideration.
 
MRD said:
David, as a site moderator, perhaps it should be considered to remove or suspend Any Human from these boards. I am a silent observer of these boards and enjoy them greatly. Over the last couple of years, I have noticed a tremendously high number of posts from Any Human in which he makes comments that range from senseless at best and gibberish at worst. Most of the time he replies to his own comments (i.e. talks to himself) on these boards. He doesn't bring any real broadcast knowledge to these boards, rather, he floods them with his senseless musings. Just something for your consideration.
Click to expand...

I would agree. His ideas and theories come way out of left field from some other planet.
 
Thanks for the constructive criticism, guys. You have good points and I need to slow down, chill, and perhaps watch some TV instead of trolling here all the time.




KHJS is still not sounding good, here is the feed I believe the transmitter's pulling from.
http://192.99.233.46:9538/
 
I would suggest AnyHuman is here because of an interest in radio. Perhaps the better option might be to explain and teach. It's how we learned the business.

I would think 99.1 has had issues all along. They are not likely flush with cash. Their engineering might be someone who not qualified but volunteers to help. Meanwhile they try to scrounge the cash to hire an engineer to come out. That engineer might suggest different equipment or costly repairs that are beyond them at this point so they deal with what they have. It's sort of like when you are broke and your clunker car needs repair but you don't have the cash. You just try to make it with what you have. It isn't pretty and it might mean doing more damage than just parking it until you get the cash, but you deal with what you have until you can change it.

There have been too many times I have seen a fix not take or a fix cause other stressed parts to fail when it comes to transmitters and the broadcast chain. For every action there is a reaction. I recall a time at one station we struggled 2 years and lost most of our revenue before we could get equipment replaced and everything reworked. Once we got it fixed it took longer to repair our reputation but that happened in time.

99.1 likely is held by a group that knows little about radio but thought it would be pretty cool to have a station as an outlet for their ministry. They likely know as much about engineering as I do about rocket science. It's like they know where point A and point B are but no clue of the path that gets them from point to point. Even worse they likely don't know who to ask for directions.Unfortunately that is too common among LPFM stations.
 
I've seen one non-com FM site that is operated by a local church as an outreach tool for the local Hispanic population. The transmitter site was built in the middle of nowhere and getting power to the site was costly. Microwave STL was out of the question and the only other option was satellite internet. They use a couple of Barix boxes running at an extremely low bitrate. It works, but the audio quality is pretty bad. As b-turner said, these things are far too common with LPFM and low budget non-com stations.
 
The stream itself is 96 kbps AAC, so the encoder is getting the audio that way. I'd be willing to bet they are using some equipment at the station itself that is causing that problem. Sounds like a lot of noise reduction is used and it is messing the audio up. What I'm seeing looks like heavily bit reduced audio, but way too much of a digital noise reduction plug-in can cause that as well. It's removing far too much audio.
 
When in my PC's media player the bitrate keeps changing as the player displays. I'd say it fluctuates around 60-70 most of the time but I saw it go down to 48 or so once actually.

KHJS itself isn't broadcasting anything for a couple of days, just on and silent again while the stream continues to run.
 
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